physics

Petra Schwille

Petra Schwille is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Petra Schwille rather than just read about it. In short: Petra Schwille (born 25 January 1968 in Sindelfingen) is a German professor and a researcher in the area of biophysics. Since 2011, she has been a director of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany.

Key takeaways

Petra Schwille belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Petra Schwille to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Petra Schwille from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Petra Schwille (born 25 January 1968 in Sindelfingen) is a German professor and a researcher in the area of biophysics. Since 2011, she has been a director of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She is known for her ground-laying work in the field of fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy, and numerous contributions on model membranes. Her current research focuses around bottom-up approaches to building an artificial cell within a broader area of synthetic biology. In 2010, Schwille received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Education Schwille graduated with a Diploma in physics from the University of Göttingen in 1993. She worked toward her doctoral degree in physics at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, and received her degree from Technical University of Braunschweig in 1996, with a thesis on fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy.

Career Schwille worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University in 1997, and returned to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen to a research group leader position in 1999. She became a professor of biophysics at TU Dresden in 2002. In 2012, Schwille became the director of the research department "Cellular and Molecular Biophysics" at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, as well as an Honorary Professor in physics at LMU Munich. She is also a chief co-coordinator of MaxSynBio, a research network of the Max Planck Society for synthetic biology. Schwille developed the "two-photon cross-correlation spectroscopy" method with which fundamental cellular processes can be explored. Schwille has been a member of the scientific Board of Trustees of the Heinrich Wieland Prize since 2011.

Awards and honors

Awards 2001: Lecturer award by the German Chemical Industry Fund 2003: Young Investigator Award for Biotechnology of the Peter und Traudl Engelhorn Foundation 2004: Philip Morris Research Prize 2010: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) 2011: Braunschweig Research Prize 2013: Suffrage Science Award, MRC-CSC, London 2018: Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art 2021: Otto Warburg Medal

Memberships and fellowships 2005: Max-Planck-Fellow of the MPI for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics 2010: Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2011: Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) 2013: Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2013: Member of EMBO 2015: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society 2017: Fellow of the Biophysical Society 2018: Member of the Academia Europaea

See also Fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy Timeline of women in science

References

External links "Petra Schwille, Direktorin, Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie". YouTube. ARD-alpha. 20 June 2016. Retrieved 22 February 2020. Petra Schwille publications indexed by Google Scholar "Academy of Europe: Schwille Petra". Academia Europaea – The Academy of Europe. Retrieved 6 March 2020.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Petra Schwille

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Petra Schwille claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Petra Schwille before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Petra Schwille ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Petra Schwille

In research: Petra Schwille appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Petra Schwille in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Petra Schwille is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1968 births, German biophysicists, German physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Petra Schwille outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Petra Schwille in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Petra Schwille means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Petra Schwille out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Petra Schwille in simple terms?

Why does Petra Schwille matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Petra Schwille?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Petra Schwille.